How can your Home Care company win over the Social Worker?

How Do You Pamper Your New Move-Ins?

9 Strategies for Making Senior Communities Stand Out

Best Marketing Practice: Road Shows Creates New Leads

The Rise of Cyber Seniors

Belvedere of Westlake’s unique living arrangement goes national

Senior Living Shoppers Say Community Staff is No. 1 Selling Point

How a Daily Marketing Plan Can Make You More Effective

From the Roaring Twenties to a CCRC

Why Consumers Love Printed Newsletters

As a senior care and living marketer, perhaps you’ve advanced to the stage where you’re ready to engage in blogging as part of your Internet Marketing strategy. At face value, blogging may seem fairly straight forward, simply write an article about something and publish it. However, effective blogging to engage both your target audience as well as achieve search engine optimization (SEO), requires understanding the technical aspects of blogging. Otherwise you may be just wasting your time writing.

Several basic elements to consider include how much time you can devote to researching and writing the blog articles, the frequency of publication (a minimum of once a week is essential) managing and monitoring the blog, determining what your comment policy will be, and of course, developing a strategy to grow your follower list (essential to create the credibility you seek).

However, even before you think about all of those elements, it’s important to determine what the real purpose your blog will serve. What do you want it to accomplish? Do you want to be an educational resource and provide helpful information on how to be a caregiver, or how to choose the service they need?

Or do you want to make it more of a personal blog by sharing your own personal experiences or those of others whom have benefited from your service? This is a very important first step to consider, because this will help your readers decide whether your blog is worth coming back to again, or referring or sharing with others.

The 3 Blogging Styles To Consider

Educational

An educational blog is one that covers information that is helpful to your audience and helps them make decisions about the care and service issues. An educational blog is really powerful in establishing credibility for your expertise as a senior care and living service provider. It demonstrates you understand your customer and what they need. 

Narrative

A narrative blog uses the powerful elements of storytelling. This type of blog engages the reader and emotionally propels them through a story that is about a personal situation that all readers can relate to, such as how you had to take the car keys away from mom because it wasn’t safe for her to drive any more.

Personal

A personal blog is one that can be both educational and narrative, however it focuses on personal opinions and stories to make a point. A personal blog is genuine, and gives you insight into who the blogger is, and helps you make a personal connection with the writer…it makes it personal. If you are a health care provider who has the desire to give information through personal experiences, and if you are comfortable giving out details from your professional and personal life, this type of blog can really help you connect with your audience.

A good blog actually incorporates all three different styles at different points in time. However, selecting one core specific type of blog style to base your writing on helps you to plan your content calendar and research. Regardless of what type of blog style you choose to use, the most important aspect of blogging for both visitor and engagement and search engine optimization (SEO) is frequency.  You must be able to sustain your blog. If you don’t have time for writing or don’t like to write, don’t let that stop you from one of the most valuable Internet Marketing strategies. Many senior care and living organizations take advantage of the blog subscription services offered by CISCO & CO.

What style of blog writing have you found engages your audience the most?

By Patty Cisco, MBA, Creative Catalyst 

CISCO & CO is a marketing firm dedicated to senior care and senior living organizations. They specialize in traditional and internet marketing strategies, and sales tactics that result in sustainable census. To learn more visit http://www.ciscoco.com today and get your FREE marketing strategies and sales tactics e-tips weekly.

Well, actually I’m back in Dallas, but wanted to wrap up our experience in Charlotte, exhibiting at ALFA’s Annual Conference.

 - Attendance continues to trend down, or at least tradeshow attendance.  As I have said before, online purchasing and the demands on attendees make the tradeshow a lower priority

- The ALFA staff does a great job creating a good atmosphere and environment.  They are very creative in trying to create traffic, but they have a tough fight.

- There were five print guide companies represented, a high for the last few years.  Good to see them all and hopefully this a positive for that segment of our business.

- Charlotte is a great city for a conference.  Clean, attractive downtown with many good restaurants and other gathering spots all within walking distance. 

- Overall, a good experience, but that of course depends on how some of our leads pan out.  It was quality over quantity, and the traffic decline will leave many of the vendors I talked to evaluating the ROI from future shows.

Misclassifying Leads Can Decrease Move Ins

Why customer awareness is so important

Senior Living Executive – May/June Issue

What Chinese Water Torture and Email Marketing For Senior Living Have in Common

Optimizing lead generation in your senior care company is not easy–it’s a highly competitive marketplace that requires efficient management of lead generation, quote management and closing sales. That is why professionals are turning to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software program to collect, automate, and streamline these processes.

Easy access to technology is most important in capturing the full marketing process by collecting and managing all manner of data necessary for targeted marketing efforts and sales optimization.

In addition, eliminating the need for cumbersome and time consuming spreadsheets and other home grown internal reports are key to considering a web-based CRM. This enables your senior care company and sales personnel to quickly enter information at their fingertips that rolls up data immediately to streamline your current reporting methods. Know that most CRM companies do not have a team of developers to customize their CRM’s upon request from clients, you should consider that you will be looking for a new CRM that does as your company changes and grows.

The features of a CRM should include an automated lead system, the generation of trending reports and the ability to create your own reports along with a calendar for marketing events that can boost marketing efforts with knowledge at your fingertips.

With quick access to meetings and follow-up calls to contacts and current accounts; productivity can be measured and quantified. Look for a CRM that allows an outcome area upon each meeting or call that provides feedback to the management team on the success of the task. Thus measuring the quality of each task to move the task forward by outcome, track census (if necessary) and other major milestones within your CRM.

If you are looking to implement a more efficient way to manage lead generation and to stay in contact with your contacts, there are specific attributes in a CRM that works best. To learn more and ask questions, register today!

Join this FREE Webinar on “Why Your Senior Care Company Should Invest in a CRM!” to learn more about CRM’s and the power that they provide your company register for this informative 1 hour Webinar!

When:  May 22, 2013

Where : https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/775852242 

What Time:  2 pm to 3 pm EDT

Sponsored by

By:  Andrea Zabinski-CEO
Contact:  andreazabinski@ltcadmissionscoach.com
877-582-7483

Congrats to our client web team who have successfully launched 20 web sites this month!

Here is some food for thought and possible impetus for action:

Timely advice on a delicate/sensitive issue.  Can’t make mistakes here:

http://tinyurl.com/btxm52a

The next growth frontier for senior housing?

http://tinyurl.com/ccbwxgs

Great advice on the continual need to keep learning:

http://www.boomerplaces.com/boomers-continue-to-learn/

Quick advice on marketing terms when targeting seniors:

http://www.leadingage.org/Whats_Wrong_With_the_Words_We_Use_to_Describe_CCRCs.aspx

Its always insightful when I can get a glimpse into how our clients are evaluating our services.  Recently, I was working with a national home care chain that has been with us for years on some new areas.  She did an excellant job of evaluating, getting key infomation, presenting to the decision makers and also setting them with key metrics to judge the success of the investment.  Here are some key points from her presentation:

- where possible, fully review performance of existing or past placements in other markets, speaking with those involved and looking for testimonials or negative feedback

- invest in a targeted option, where your dollars are aimed at your demographic

- look at all benefits of the package and view them as components of the whole, not stand alone pieces

- set proper expectations of the placement – leads, traffic, calls?  Different avenues bring different results

- Set measurement criteria that is quantifiable, but make sure those in the loop know to gather the needed data

Take the time upfront to evaulate, gather all needed data and set up measurement criteria and your chances of a solid ROI are dramatically increased!

New Lifestyles will be hitting the road for an appearance at ALFA’s 2013 Annual Conference and Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Our booth is 917, which will be the epicenter of the show.

Stacee Howse and I will be spreading the word about all things New LifeStyles while hoping to hear what’s new in the world of our clients and how we can better meet your marketing needs.  We’ll have special prizes for those that can guess which of us is Stacee.

Come by and get caught up on the NEW New Lifestyles web site and other innovations, brainstorm on new distribution ideas, try to knock Stacee into our dunking booth or just trade Airplane, Caddyshack or Animal House quotes with me.

It will be exciting, information and safe for the whole family.  See ya there, Doug